On Friday morning, Anthony Bourdain died by suicide in France, devastating news in many ways. If you’ve ever suffered depression, you know someone else’s suicide can make you think itchy, uncomfortable thoughts. I won’t go into difficult detail, in case you have suffered depression, but please understand: I know. Also: other people know:

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we explore the righteous anger of Hole’s 1994 album Live Through This.

Oh boy. Live Through This was the soundtrack for my years-long swan dive into the dark. It completely captured my rage, anguish and inability to make sense of my life.

…for Love, who watched grunge break through to the mainstream only to find that the freedom and rebellion it promised was reserved for her male counterparts. In grunge, men could be scruffy and rude and defy gender norms—they could be rawer than the men modeled in synth-pop music videos or hair metal concerts a few years prior. Women, for all the space afforded them in the subculture’s spotlight moment, might as well have been Lilith.

By then, I was already Lilith, flying off the edge of the earth (that link references Enid Dame, whom I knew and loved.)

The album’s pummeling opener “Violet” baits the ear with a jangling guitar tone cut from the same cloth as R.E.M., and then drummer Patty Schemel churns the song into a fury. “Go on, take everything/Take everything/I want you to,” howls Love, her bitterness oxidized into defiance.

In a second profile of Love, published in 1995, Vanity Fair conducted the first-ever interview with the singer’s mother, the therapist Linda Carroll. “Her fame is not about being beautiful and brilliant, which she is,” Carroll said. “It’s about speaking in the voice of the anguish of the world.” That the anguish of the world would have a female voice was an idea new to the music industry. It’s still new. Love makes a bid for universality on Live Through This in that it’s hard not to get swept up in her energy, but she also acknowledges that female pain is marked, that it is compartmentalized and dismissed because it is felt by women, not people.

Siobhan, between jobs briefly and camping on my couch, saw me come home from a terrible job to a failed relationship in a disastrous living situation, howling this song and remarked, “Oh good, you have an anthem.” Violet was my anthem, but when I lost my home, my memory, my artwork and my man, it didn’t seem incidental that I also lost my singing voice and my ability to write by hand after decades as a prolific journal writer. I lost everything I recognized about me. Essentially, I spent four years in absolute darkness, six years building a new self and a new life, and the last eleven years teaching myself how to learn again, and a new way of living without much of a past.

This morning, I listened to Live Through This to find out how I felt, more than twenty years later. Busy at work, I found there were songs I didn’t remember and songs I wished I’d heard recently. Credit In the Straight World is a fantastic song. I have little idea what the lyrics are about, but I love the jangly, swooping guitar sounds and Love’s voice skimming their surface like a skipping stone. “I don’t really miss God, but I still miss Santa Claus,” from Gutless, for my money, sums up Love’s ambivalence about men and authority figures. God punishes the people He supposedly loves, and giver-of-gifts Santa has no respect for personal boundaries. Either one could have behaved a little better if he tried, but at least Santa leaves presents.

Adorable Wednesday is adorable, but also brilliant and ferocious. And adorable!

Live Through This was released four days after Kurt Cobain’s suicide. On She Walks On Me, Love sings:

I don’t know what this song was about, and that never mattered. He was dead and she was absolutely wrecked by his death and everything that followed. You can read about her life anywhere; I don’t have to repeat that for you. This is almost prophesy.

Few people get up in the morning and decide to kill themselves. Most people who commit suicide think about it for a long time, make decisions about how and when and who will find the body. I understand the state of mind of a person who feels he/she cannot live this life anymore and is looking for a way out. I don’t blame them at all. I feel in the lyrics Love wrote before Cobain died that someone was not committed to surviving. Maybe it was her. Maybe him, but he beat her to the finish line.

___________________

I stared at this page, at words, at pictures, for two weeks, not sure what to say. I’m still not sure. Bourdain’s death kicked my ass. After some dark days, he finally seemed to have gotten into shape, come to terms with the failings of the food industry, found the right ferocious woman, mentored the right people, met his heroes, and gone to places that he loved and that needed him. Essentially, he appeared to have gotten his shit together. If you’ve ever been depressed, discovering that wasn’t 100% true was like a shot to the gut. He wasn’t lying. He was just holding it together in a way that was invisible to me, and since we’re now talking about me, I felt deeply shaken by his death. The following Monday, I felt like I’d gone back to work too soon after a death in my family. I can’t explain that.

I’ve been staring at this page for two weeks now. I’m going to hit publish and move on to the next thing. I have to. I’m still speechless, but there are other things we have to talk about, and we have to talk about them now.

A lot of people will tell you carrot greens are not edible. Those people are full of shit. Carrot greens – especially young carrot greens – belong in salads and soups.

I was taking miserably bad pictures of my garden for a few weeks. Why? I don’t know. Inspiration left me and joined the Foreign Legion or something. This morning, I weeded the garden of plants I didn’t remember planting and plants I regretted planting. It was pleasant for me to spend time in my garden on a Monday morning. I suspect the plants on the compost pile might offer a different report.

The garden, as it is currently constituted, is difficult to photograph, by which I mean I suck at photography. The soil is dark and rich. The plants are vibrant shades of green. The chickens are surly and demanding, the neighbors are full of crazy and Andie’s garden cat Kitty refuses to come in the house since it stopped snowing. I go out the back door and have no idea what I’ll find, no matter how many times a day I crack open the door.

It’s rained every day or every other day for about two weeks. The ground is saturated, the river is high and lettuces laugh maniacally.

Tomorrow is a big day at my job. All Hell is going to break loose and for the next little while – hold onto your hats – I’m going to try staying calm and being reasonable. STOP LAUGHING! I’ve been reasonable once or twice. Probably. I mean, it could happen, or we could have blocks of chocolate delivered to my office, for general gnawing purposes. I guess therapy dogs don’t drive themselves places, but I can’t rule out ordering them from Amazon.

For a bunch of years in a row, I took a picture of the backyard garden from the top of the back steps, usually on Sundays because that was probably the day I charged the camera battery. Or milked the cow. I don’t have a cow. Anyway, taking pictures from that vantage point is a big old failure now. To show you, Poor Impulsives, the exceedingly homemade garden, I had to walk down the steps and walk around the entire ridiculously small garden, and what a sacrifice it was. You are welcome!

At the bottom of the back steps and to the left, the temporary greenhouse and the solarizing bed.

Almost as soon as we put up the temporary greenhouse, two storms came along and threw everything inside on the ground. Stuff is now growing on the floor. I don’t know what that is, exactly. Can’t wait to find out if it bears fruit or tries to kill me.

At the bottom of the steps, slightly less left: the berm in the foreground; in the background, the stairs that will be covered with window boxes, a composter, the high raised bed.

Pete and I built the plant prison with chicken wire sides, which was a total pain in the ass and was guaranteed to whack me in the face every time I tried to get closer to my plants. He revamped this dealio with plastic fencing along the sides and I am the very happiest of happy campers. At no time has plastic fencing attacked my person and the squirrels are totally out of the big raised bed.

Standing in front of the greenhouse and looking straight back at containers full of potatoes, sweet potatoes and asparagus. The higher raised bed in the distance is full of garlic. The chicken chateau to the right is full of surly chickens.

I plant a lot of potatoes. Nothing is more fun than dumping out a container of potato plants to find wonderful new potatoes on the surface of the solarizing bed. Dudes, you can grow food in hilariously small spaces – if you can protect it from voracious wildlife. And your neighbor with boundary issues.

The higher raised bed is full of garlic and clover. I love garlic and I’m experimenting with cover crops. I’m at that age, you see. Against the fence to the left will be a forest of peas & beans; against the forest to the right will be a forest of asparagus, a couple of years in the future.

I like walking around the plant prison to the space near the higher raised bed. This is the center of the garden space and from here, I can see most everything. From here, I see things I should fix and things I should be patient about. Place your bets.

This is the spot where Andie’s cat Kitty likes to nap on sunny days. I love finding her here. I wish the squirrels were a little more nonplussed.

Walking around the berm/plant prison, there’s the tumbling composter, the stairs Pete built to hold planted containers, the layer composter, a container of potatoes. Also visible: a whole lot of garden fence pieces put away carefully.

The other day, I took a weed-whacker to the yard. I like this part of the garden green and mossy, but weeds are aggressive everywhere. I was careful to pick the dandelion greens for the chickens before I weed-whacked this area to within an inch of its life.

Turning directly around, this is the backside of the berm/plant prison; beyond on the left, the higher raised bed filled with garlic; beyond right is the chicken run and coop.

It’s hard to tell from this picture, but lots of seeds are sprouting in the plant prison. This planting method is working for me. I have backaches, but for other reasons.

Behind the berm/plant prison, looking straight back at potatoes, the garlicky higher raised bed, the future home of an asparagus forest, and the fence between me and the little boy singing, “JET! OO OO OO OO! JET!” over and over again.

When I was a kid, the retired neighbors across the street spent all of their time and energy planting flowers and trimming their hedges and adjusting their pansies and I thought they were crazy people. Maybe they were. But about the plants: I get it.

I’m excited about getting up tomorrow morning to water plants. Because: craaaazy.

This spring, we’re up to all sorts of wild new stuff. I cut off all my red hair and now I look people in the eye and wait for them to say something about it. I built the berm in the low raised bed and Andie and I covered it with fertile soil. Andie moved the blueberry bushes to the front of the house and planted the currant bushes. My job has taken a turn for the more interesting and serious and – surprise! – I rather like it.

Five foot by five foot by too high for me to reach, dammit!

Over the winter, I took a part-time job to send Panky to space camp, but plans change. Miss Sasha and Mr. Sasha decided that Panky should wait another year before he goes to sleep away camp, but found Panky a summer robotics program near them. In an exciting turn of events, I’ve made enough at my part-time job to send both Panky and Buckwheat to summer camp. Do you know what that means? That means in the future, Mama can pay some bills.

This morning, I fought a chicken for some eggs. I went outside to feed the chickens after sunup. Chicken Chicken usually greets me at the door, but this morning, she was not there. A feeling of dread came over me. Afraid Chicken Chicken, who is quite old, might have come to a sudden end, I opened the coop door and found Chicken Chicken very much alive. She leaned back and revealed an egg, then three more. I was reaching for that egg when the small, feisty black chicken flew at me, landed in the coop and and began pecking at one of the eggs.

This is about a century of one family’s arts, crafts and major awards.

I picked up that little chicken, whose name is either Patty, Maxene or LaVerne, whereupon she pecked me ineffectually. Weeks ago I realized that the pecking of a tiny chicken didn’t actually hurt, so I could pick her up and put her down in the run. Anyway, peck! peck! peck! Chicken kerfuffle! Wings and feathers everywhere! I gathered the eggs, closed the coop and set the eggs where Andie would find them. Then I went to work and described to my crying co-workers the reason I was covered with chicken coop pine shavings.

My raised garden bed has not been a source of unmitigated good news. Because it is four feet wide and I am a very small large mammal, reaching into the middle of a bed I can’t step on is a dicey proposition. More than a few backaches dampened my enthusiasm as recently as last weekend, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Two weeks ago, Central New Jersey had a crushing snowstorm that took down trees everywhere. I had an idea. It was a very old idea I’d come to on my own. It’s called hugelkultur, and the principle is to use what is on hand to solve problems.

Sunday, I dragged my little red wagon to the corner and turned left. Between two birch trees, I found a metric buttload of small branches. My neighbors watched from behind curtains as I filled and overfilled the wagon with branches and sticks. Don’t worry. When I see them do sketchy shit, I don’t make eye contact either.

The raised bed, viewed with my back to the house, in the first stage of reshaping the surface.

Pete and I drove out to the feed store, where baby chicks distracted me from my worries and I spent a zany amount of dosh on seeds. Note to self: YOU ARE DONE WITH THAT. Anyhoo: we were driving around and broken branches everywhere frustrated me because I can’t operate a chainsaw and Pete says I’d be a total menace with a Sawzall. Which is true, and mostly to myself. Maybe. But Pete also said that right in front of our house, down a cross street, a fallen tree I’d reported to police might solve problems, but first, we both needed sandwiches and a time out because we were both grrr grrr bad kids.

This may be a thing where you live or not, but maybe where you live, jerks call the cops on Black teens who take pictures on their way home from high school. That’s happening in my tiny town. There’s no excuse for it. In fact, cops should call themselves on kids not taking pictures of every little thing and give themselves a stern talking-to about being the goddamn adults. Since I am what passes for an adult, I ate a sandwich and walked my red wagon down to the fallen tree with my pruning shears. I filled and overfilled the little red wagon with branches and sticks. Twice, I walked down my street three or four houses and filled the wagon again. All of this debris was collected within 100 feet of my house. The last time I went out, I saw a man in a car spy me from a distance and slow down, because no one expects to find a grandmother with a red wagon and pruning shears on his front lawn. He drew closer, then darted down the driveway I was not blocking, and stole into his own house. After that, I waited for the police, who did not, somehow, come.

The first step of hugelkultur is to create a spine of logs, branches and sticks. This is the first step of the first step. As soon as the snowpocalypse we expect tonight and tomorrow thaw and fade from memory, I will collect more branches and sticks to build this spine higher and wider. This is going to give me a backache. I should stock up on Aleve.

The same garden bed viewed from the opposite corner. Not pictured: beavers. Not at all.

After I collect more branches and sticks, the next step is to cover it liberally with rich organic soil. It’s going to compact as the branches decay and enrich the soil. If I play my cards right, I will gain two square feet of planting space the length of my raised bed. The trick is to at this point make the spine high enough to prevent future backaches.

This week, I went to training seminar so difficult and upsetting the trainer switched to pictures of an adorable puppy when trainees got pissed off. Punchline: I was not invited to this seminar or sent there. I crashed this party. And good thing I did, because if I didn’t know what was coming and six weeks from now this bullshit came as an awful surprise, I’d be in handcuffs in short order. So this was a good thing. What the fuck is wrong with me?